Moving...

All posts tagged with post(human-animal) have moved to http://posthumananimal.blogspot.com.

UndoConstructs: Krishnamurti on images (interior, private)

(Linked from undoconstructs.blogspot.com) 'If you observe you will see that you have an image about yourself, ... [for instance] you have accumulated a great deal of experience, acquired a great deal of knowledge, which in itself creates ... the image of the expert. Why do we have images about ourselves? Those images separate people. If you have an image of yourself as Swiss or British or French and so on, that image not only distorts your observation of humanity but it also separates you from others. And wherever there is separation, division, there [will] be conflict — as there is conflict going on all over the world, the Arab against the Israeli, the Muslim against the Hindu, one Christian church against another. National division and economic division all result from images, ... and the brain clings to these images &mdash why? Is it because of our education, because of our culture in which the individual is most important and where the collective society is something totally different from the individual? That is part of our culture, part of our religious training and of our daily education. When one has an image about oneself as being British or American, that image gives one a certain security. That is fairly obvious. Having created the image about oneself that image becomes semi-permanent; behind that image, or in that image, one tries to find security, safety ... When one is related to another, however delicately, however subtly, psychically or physically, there is a response based on an image ... the image is slowly formed about the other person step by step; every reaction is remembered, adding to the image and stored up in the brain so that the relationship — it may be physical, sexual, or psychical — is actually between two images, one's own and the other's.'

Source: Krishnamurti in The Network of Thought, ISBN 0-06-064813-9, p40. Krishnamurti likens the condition of the human mind to the programming of a computer, and ruminates upon how to form an independent network of thought.

UndoConstructs: Where We Come From description by Lori Waxman

(Linked from undoconstructs.blogspot.com) 'In Emily Jacir's series "Where We Come From" (2002-2003), everything is quotidian. Her amateurish photos have a snapshot quality that wouldn't look out of place in most family albums. And the people, places and things captured by her digital camera are so commonplace they would hardly even bear inclusion in such albums: a girl and boy playing street soccer, someone wandering around the city, the paying of a bill, a family visit, a couple on a dinner date. Typical human moments experienced without much thought, as part of daily routines, around the world.

Except by Palestinians. Because being Palestinian can mean not being able to engage in actions most people take for granted. It can mean not being able to leave the Gaza Strip to buy a favourite liqueur or to enter Haifa just to hang out, or to travel from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to put flowers on a mother's grave. Living in the Gaza City with a Palestinian passport or in New York with a Lebanese passport or in Riyadh with a Jordanian passport can render even the most banal needs impossible.

It is these chores that Jacir fulfills, acting as a surrogate for Abier, Hana, Johnny, Fayez and dozens of other Palestinians for whom such everyday activities have been elevated by forces out of their control to the status of unrealizable desire. To them and a far-flung network of Palestinians across the globe, Jacir, a Palestinian artist armed with an American passport, posed the question: "If I could do something for you anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?"

She answered their simple requests by carrying them out. The photographs described above are her proofs of accomplishment. She hangs this photographic evidence alongside text panels that detail, in English and Arabic, the request in the recipient's own words as well as his or her name, birthplace, current residence, nationality (according to passport) and parents' birthplaces.'

Source: Lori Waxman, "Picturing Failure", Parachute 115, 2004.

SL 2.0: Narrative

(Linked from secondlife-sfai.blogspot.com) '[T]he conversation took place in a sim called The Study of Racialism being directed by the moderator of the sim Raymond Frog (second life name)...The conversation was as follows:

background noise...
...talking about the slides being shown
(assumed Australian guy)"Were there black people back then?"
(Raymond Frog-mediator) "Oh of course their were black people back then. in fact our whole species emerged in Africa, so we were probably all very dark originally"
(assumed Australian guy) "It kind of begs the question in the context of evolution...like why are there still black people?"
(Raymond Frog-mediator) "Well of course you find the closer you are to the equator the more the bulk of your complexion needs to be to protect yourself from ultraviolet rays. So you'll have the same dark skin color throughout the region around the equator."
(assumed Australian guy) "No we don't have any black people in Australia actually"
(Raymond Frog-mediator) " What's that?"
(assumed Australian guy) "What?"
(Raymond Frog-mediator) "I'm sorry what was the last thing you said?"
(assumed Australian guy) "What did you say?"
(Raymond Frog-mediator) "I was just asking what was the last thing that you said?"'

Source: Daniel Small. Personal communication by email, 01.18.2009.

SL 2.0: Outline of topics

(Linked from secondlife-sfai.blogspot.com) For those topics that are only outlined and not elaborated on yet, here are some descriptions and examples so that you can fill in the rest. If you want more details just email me.

New exhibition sites
Siting cross-cultural art:
. Problem of audience for cross-cultural artists, e.g. Shirin Neshat's Fervor,
  Xu Bing's Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?
. Site art in SL in the place of the desired audience.
. Site in more than one place, e.g. for Western audience, and compare reactions
. Bourriaud in "Relational Aesthetics": site of art as space for discussion

Art prototype and archive:
. Art modeling and walk through, visualization for proposals and publicity, such
  as Scott Snibbe's Blow Up for YBCA website and brochure before installation is
  created in the gallery
. If funding doesn't come through or no funding for ambitious project, can still
  construct piece in SL
. Afterwards piece can continue to exist in SL as archive e.g. Lynn Hershman
. Conceptual art exercise in New Genres class: Think of a piece assuming you have
  no constraints of any kind

Critical landscapes:
. Visualize the effects on the local by the global (referencing the global
  communication aspect of SL)
. Visualize social networks, e.g. Mark Lombardi, Warren Sack's works and examples
  in 'Aesthetics of Information Visualization'
. Digitally-constructed landscapes to be traversed that are too ambitious to be made
  into physical space
. Digital landscapes that are generated in real time (Pierre Huyghe's landscape
  traversed by Ann-Lee generated from sound, others: seismic waves, oil prices etc.),
  or information mapped onto higher-dimensional objects that can be viewed one
  time-slice at a time
(www.geom.uiuc.edu/graphics/pix/General_Interest/Higher_Dimensional_Objects/)

Narrative
. Use existing forms and incorporate SL content and medium-specific elements e.g.
  Daniel Small's documentary and agitation (in a way that's similar to the Electronic
  Disturbance Theater) uses requests to the server to bombard the space with a
  mountain of surreal smileys and colorful explosion (depicts SL as a lawless
  place, like Sonnenfield's WWW, MiB)
. Insert and perform actions to engage, e.g. Patty Chang's Shangri-La
. Insert other participants to enage, e.g. Tino Sehgal's
  This is so contemporary and other works
. Combine multi-room installations with avatar performers (some can be
  automated).
  E.g. a scenario like Russian Ark, in the form of installations with material
  from archives, or historical scenes/time travel. Possible themes: history (to reflect
  on present, to interrogate the past, personal histories, histories that have fallen
  off canons). Another theme is culture (own - related to history, against 'othering',
  e.g. Coco Fusco's Two Undiscovered Americans Visit the West)
. A walk e.g. Janet Cardiff with voice-over (preferably binaural!), or script of places
  to go, or choices at each point. Or one that takes people on a tour on intersex
  fashion
. Exquisite corpse games to engage with people as one walks through SL, e.g.
  Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mysterious Object at Noon

Language
. Seamless translation of languages in chat.
. A good example is Yael Kanarek's online space for Palestinians and Israelis. This
  time Hebrewis not privileged over Arabic and all 3 languages are available at once.
. The cultural spaces described in the above two sections provide a location for
  people interested in other cultures to interact, analogous to pen-pals/host-family/
  exchange student.
. Benefits: people don't travel much as U.S. is a large country, and being a
  superpower, it has a large influence on people in/from other countries.
. Philip Rosedale mentioned the possibility of metaphorical language?

Collaboration
. Between people who don't normally talk to each other, e.g. technoscience theorists/
  artists and scientists/engineers, Left/Right in the U.S..